What’s New in Ultra
One of the hallmarks of the Blackboard Ultra Experience is the speed with which new features are developed and released. In fact, new features become available every month! Some of these features are large updates with entirely new functionality, others are very small enhancements that improve the teaching and learning experience. The latest release of Learn SaaS was for September of 2024. You can read the full release notes here.
Menu Location Change
While only a cosmetic change and not a functional one, you will notice that the menu in your Ultra courses has moved from the left to the right.
Add a Course Link in Your Blackboard Ultra Course
You can now link from the Course Content page in your Blackboard Ultra course to other areas within your course with a Course Link.
Course Links can be used to improve navigation within your course. One use case would be to create links for students to access Blackboard Ultra Assignments more quickly. The Assignments themselves may be housed within their respective Learning Modules, but you may want to create a separate Homework Folder with Course Links to each Assignment. These Course Links can help students, so they don’t need to search through each Learning Module to find the most recent assignment.
The Learning Technologies Knowledge Base includes an article with instructions on how to create a Course Link.
Hiding Dropped Students in the Blackboard Ultra Gradebook
You asked, Anthology listened!
Prompted by recommendations from real Blackboard Ultra users in the Anthology Idea Exchange, you can now hide dropped students in your Ultra Course Gradebook!
This process can be completed from any of the Gradebook views. Here’s how:
Navigate to the Gradebook in your Ultra course. Click the Gradebook Settings (gear) icon in the upper right corner (note: not the Course Settings. The Gradebook Settings are just below this).Under Student Visibility, toggle on the option, Hide students in the gradebook who no longer have access to the course. The icon will show as checked and will turn green.
That’s it! Now, you will no longer see students in your Gradebook who have withdrawn from your course. Need to re-display dropped students in your Gradebook? Click the Students Visibility toggle again and the students will reappear in your Gradebook.
Other New Features
Instructors:
- Usability improvements for Documents
- Video Studio: Enhanced caption support for uploaded files
- Usability improvement for Knowledge Checks
- Generate question banks
- Quickly access items that need grade reconciliation
- Show unavailable students in the gradebook
- Brightspace conversion improvements
Instructors and Students:
- Award Course Badges with Achievements
- Award Open Badges Automatically with Anthology Milestone
- Enhancements to student submission review page
- Flexible Grading performance improvements
All users:
Share Your Suggestions for Ultra Updates
Do you have an idea for an improvement to Blackboard Ultra? Use the Anthology (Blackboard) Idea Exchange! We encourage you to use the Idea Exchange to recommend changes to Blackboard Ultra, and to support ideas presented by other faculty. You can upvote existing posts to show your support and encourage Anthology to prioritize implementing these ideas in Blackboard Ultra. If you post to the Idea Exchange, please let us know so we can upvote your recommendation!
